Fall of the Risen
by MoistPenguin68
Summary: Firestar ruins everything. TW: everything.
1. The End

It was a beautiful day in the forest. The sun shone down onto the camp that ThunderClan called home, and there was nary a cloud to be seen in the sky.

"Brackenfur?" Firestar called out, in a deeper voice than his normal one. As usual, he was pronouncing the warrior's name wrong.

Brackenfur walked across camp to where Firestar was sprawled comfortably, with Graystripe and Brambleclaw sitting at his sides. Brackenfur was as loyal as they came (which he would soon regret) but even he had noticed something a little odd about the Clan leader lately.

There was a gleam in Firestar's green eyes as Brackenfur sat before him. Some would call it demonic. They would be right.

"Brackenfur!" Firestar declared, pronouncing it with the long "A" as usual. "Do you see that squirrel there?"

'There' was the fresh-kill pile, on top of which was a fluffy and recently expired squirrel. Brackenfur did indeed see it.

"Yes," he said, which was truthful.

"I want you to pick it up," Firestar said loudly. Brackenfur nodded in a politely bamboozled way, wondering why the Clan leader was making such a fuss over having a squirrel brought to him.

"Pick it up in your masculine jaws!" Firestar continued.

 _That_ was certainly… odd. "What?" Brackenfur mouthed over Firestar's shoulder at Brambleclaw.

Brambleclaw, although he was the Clan deputy, clearly had no idea what was going on. "I have no idea,"mouthed back.

Graystripe, on the other hand, was totally aware of what was coming, and was tickled pink about it.

"Pick it up in your masculine jaws," Firestar repeated in his new deep voice. By now the entire Clan was watching and Brackenfur was feeling intensely uncomfortable.

"And carry it to the lake in the light of full moon," the Clan leader continued.

Well, things had certainly taken a strange turn now. Brackenfur listened in horror as Firestar went on:

"And unsheathe your claws - your claws will glitter in the light of the full moon…"

"Do they have to?" Brackenfur interrupted, determined to make a little sense of things. "My claws are pretty clean, but - "

"SILENCE!" Firestar roared. "You will unsheathe your claws and remove the skin from the squirrel… "

Across camp, Brightheart found herself fighting the urge to vomit.

"... Remove it all!"

Brightheart lost the fight.

"... And then you will take the squirrel to a flat rock, in a clearing where the full moon shines. Find the biggest, grandest rock you can…"

Graystripe was staring at the back of Firestar's head with rapt, devoted attention. On his other side, Brambleclaw's face was a slack mask of terror. The Clan could barely believe what they were hearing.

"... And you will crush deathberries on the rock…"

"Where do I get the deathberries?" Brackenfur asked weakly, grasping for something normal.

"Out of Brambleclaw!" Firestar reached around backward and produced a pawful of deathberries.

"Whaaat?!" Brambleclaw gasped. "Where did you - How did you - Those were IN me?" He gazed around wildly, wondering what the StarClan was happening today.

Graystripe gave Brambleclaw a cool, knowing look that chilled his insides and shut him up.

Firestar slid the berries out of sight under a bush, grinning wickedly. "You will mash the berries on the rock, and roll the squirrel's body in the juice."

Brackenfur and every somewhat sane cat in the Clan was staring at Firestar in stunned silence. The complete and utter quiet was disturbing.

"Well?" Daisy's Southern voice twanged. "Then what? He can't just stop there."

Everyone moved quickly away from Daisy.

"Then," Firestar continued, "you'll pick it up by it's tail - the very tip of it's tail, the only unpoisoned bit - and carry it down to the lake. Then you'll swing the squirrel through the air with your muscular neck, and release it. And it will soar through the air in the light of the full moon and it will hit the water and we will see if it SINKS OR FLOATS!"

Brackenfur was momentarily at a loss for words, but he recovered quickly. "That's it? You just want to see if it FLOATS?"

"Yes." Firestar grinned broadly. "We'll see you tonight."

"Uh, yes, can I come watch this too?" Daisy asked in a hopeful Southern way.

"Certainly," Firestar said magnanimously.

The entire rest of the Clan looked around at each other, nobody quite ready to speak. Most of ThunderClan's leaders lost their minds eventually, and apparently Firestar had decided to kick off the descent into madness with a bang.


	2. The One with a Heart Made of Stone

"Now obviously," Firestar said to his most trusted companions, "this will all look very odd to the other Clans if they see us, but with the cover of night - "

"But they're all cats," Brambleclaw said. "You know. Cats? Night vision?"

"Blast." Firestar grumbled for a moment before coming to a logical conclusion. "We'll just have to kill anyone who sees us. Who wants to?"

The camp cleared out faster than should have been physically possible, leaving Firestar with no one but Graystripe and that fluffy young warrior who always seemed to operate on a different plane of reality.

"You there!" Firestar said. "Mousewhisker!"

"That's me!" Mousewhisker declared happily.

"Yes. Now, I seem to have given you a warrior name at some point, so I trust you can kill?"

Mousewhisker hesitated for a second, trying to work out exactly what his leader wanted to hear. Finally he answered with, "One time, I was in the forest and I saw a purple butterfly, and I spent all day chasing it and frolciking with it, and it was my butterfly friend. But then I accidentally smashed it into a tree and I cried for two hours until you came by and said I should stop crying and smacked me."

"So you _can_ kill?" Firestar had only listened to about a fourth of that anecdote.

"When I smashed the butterfly into the tree it fell apart. Like it shattered."

"Okay, so that's a yes. Can you kill other cats?"

"In our Clan?!"

"No, in other Clans."

"Oh. That's okay, I think. If it's to defend our Clan. That's what the warrior code says," Mousewhisker said faithfully.

"Yes." Firestar grinned down at him vaguely. "It sure is."


	3. Night Symphony

That night Firestar and his dear friend Graystripe crept into the warriors' den and prodded Brackenfur awake.

"Brackenfur! Let's go!" Firestar said with his usual mispronunciation and total disregard for sleeping cats.

"No," Brackenfur meowed sleepily.

"Yes!" Firestar bellowed with his new deep voice of insanity. "I command you!"

"No."

Dropping the voice, Firestar whined, "Pleeease?"

"No!"

"Brackenfur, _please_ ," Spiderleg grumbled. The other sleepy warriors mumbled their agreement. Sacrificing Brackenfur's happiness for their own sleep seemed well worth it.

"Brackenfur, just go," his own wife Sorreltail sighed.

"Sorreltail!"

"Just _go_ ," she begged.

Brackenfur almost gave in then, but his upstanding ethical code gave him strength. "No," he said firmly, and closed his eyes.

And then Firestar stepped into his personal space. "Come do it, or I'll keep sitting here making you uncomfortable!"

"No."

Firestar climbed on top of Brackenfur, sitting unsteadily on his manly back. "I'm invading your personal space! How can you possibly sleep like this?"

Brackenfur gritted his teeth and tried his best to ignore the furry sack of crazy on his back as his fellow warriors grumbled around him.

Losing his head entirely, Firestar growled, "I'LL PEE ON YOU!"

After a moment's awkward pause Graystripe said, "But you just peed before we came here."

"Well, I can work up some more!" Firestar strained for a minute that was intensely uncomfortable for everyone, especially Brackenfur.

"Okay, no I can't," Firestar admitted. "My bladder is as dry as, um, well, it's quite dry."

Determinedly Brackenfur shut his eyes, but then he felt Firestar's tongue rasping roughly on the back of his neck.

"I'll keep licking you!" Firestar threatened pitifully. "That'll make you uncomfortable!"

"As your former mentor, I order you to get up!" Graystripe added.

Something about the sheer ridiculousness of a supposedly respectable cat sitting on his back, roughly licking him and still trembling as he tried to work up a little urine, finally wore Brackenfur down. "Get off me," he said.

"No!"

"No I mean get off me, I'll come."

Firestar slid off him, grinning maniacally. "Great! Let's go! Go get the squirrel!"

Brackenfur trudged resignedly out of the den. His fellow warriors muttered sighs of relief as he went.

"What about the deathberries?" Graystripe asked softly.

"Oh, don't worry." Firestar reached over to Brambleclaw and unzipped the pouch he'd had installed in his deputy's side. "They're still in Brambleclaw."

Brambleclaw was rudely awakened by the paw rootling around in his innards. "Firestar? What are you doing in my ribs?"

Firestar laughed reassuringly as he zipped his deputy back up. "Oh, those weren't your ribs. Your ribs were shifted to the side when I had the pouch installed. Now, are you coming with us? No? Then I'll just come back for these later." He licked Brambleclaw on the forehead. "Goodnight, sweet prince."

As he and Graystripe departed, Brambleclaw settled back down into his nest, feeling a lot less safe than he had a moment ago.

"Shh" a soothing meow whispered from his side. "It's alright. Stormfur's got you."

Brambleclaw curled closer to his husband and tried not to imagine the imminent horrors facing Brackenfur tonight.


	4. Some Stains Will Never Come Out

Brackenfur marched down to the lake, accompanied silently by Firestar, Graystripe, and Daisy. Although he didn't know it, they were also being shadowed by the silent and ever-present assassin Mousewhisker.

Once at the lakeshore, the spectators sat down as if they were expecting a good show. Brackenfur gazed from them to the unfortunate squirrel corpse. "So you want me to take it's skin off?"

"Yes!" Firestar snapped. "Peel it! Peel it with your claws!"

Brackenfur tried, he truly did. It was awkward work trying to do something as precise as skinning a small rodent with your own fingernails. He screwed up a lot. Each little mistake was accompanied by a stab of guilt, twisting Brackenfur's good soul. Within an hour he was sobbing in dignified silence.

"Quit crying and get it over with, boy!" Daisy hollered. "You look like a sissy!"

"No," Firestar murmured. "Let him cry. I love the gleam of tears on his masculine jaw."

Graystripe looked at his best friend/significant other with concern for the first time. "I've done some pretty wrong things in my life, and you were there for most of them, but even I'm getting a little concerned."

"Shush," Firestar admonished him. "It's only just beginning."

At last, Brackenfur completed his first gorey quest and set the hairless squirrel's body gently in the grass. "It's so tiny," he whispered. "It's looks almost like a newborn kit." That wasn't precisely true, but given the current circumstances I think we can forgive Brackenfur for being a little emotional.

"Great, great," Firestar meowed. "Now go coat it in deathberry juice."

"It looks just like my daughters when they were born."

"Well, go roll your daughter in poisonous juice."

Graystripe and Daisy both gave Firestar shocked looks, which he completely ignored. "Come, come," he ordered, beckoning with his tail. "You lead the way, Brackenfur. It's all up to you to find the clearing. The grandest rock possible."

Brackenfur settled on the first clearing he stumbled into, which in Firestar's opinion was merely adequate.

"Where are the deathberries?" Brackenfur asked in a hollow sort of voice. All of him was starting to seem rather… _dead_ , in fact. Like he'd simply gone numb to escape the terror of the night. That was exactly what he had done. Brackenfur hoped that maybe he could just block this all from his memory.

"What?" Oh, yes, the deathberries. I suppose I'll just have to go get them out of young Brambleclaw," Firestar said in a very self-important way, with a 'see what I do for you?' tone of voice. "I'll be right back. Try not to have too much fun without me."

Fore the second time that night, Brambleclsw was woken by his side being unzipped and felt around in, but this time he'd been very deeply asleep and cuddled up with Stormfur. He did the only logical thing he could: screamed a shrill, high-pitched scream that would have brought the entire camp to his aid… if a paw hadn't smothered his face and silence him.

"Make a noise and I'll kill you," someone growled in his ear.

"Daddy?" Brambleclaw felt an icy current of fear run through his body. "Have you come back to life again?"

Firestar's jaw dropped and he quit doing the scary voice. "Whoa, whoa! I, um, wow, I knew you had daddy issues, but wow. Um."

Realizing it was someone fairly less terrifying than his father, Brambleclaw let out a sigh of relief. His heart was still hammering, though.

"Wow, uh, how many times did that happen to you?" Firestar asked awkwardly.

"A few times a week," Brambleclaw confessed.

"Okay, wow, that's, uh… we really need a Clan therapist. Remind me to get on that," Firestar said, hastily slipping out of the den.

For a moment, Brambleclaw lay alone in the dark, staring at nothingness. The sound of screaming, the horror of his past, rang in his ears. It was an unforgettable noise. He could never forget.

Then Stormfur jolted awake, panting and spluttering. "Brambleclaw! It's the spiders! They want me to tapdance and I don't want to…"

Brambleclaw sighed and gazed into Stormfur's wide amber eyes. "You tell those spiders, Stormfur."

"Yeah," Stormfur agreed drowsily, already drifting back to sleep.

"It's okay," Brambleclaw murmured soothingly, curling back up to him. "Brambleclaw's got you."


	5. Fuddle and Flush

Brackenfur was being very ineffective about crushing the deathberries. They kept rolling out from under his paw as he tried to smash them against the adequately grand rock he had found. Firestar, Graystripe, and Daisy had no sympathy, either. They were just watching him impatiently with twisted smiles.

Finally, he had what seemed like enough to coat the poor squirrel's carcass. As delicately as possible, Brackenfur rolled the sad hairless little body around in the deathberry juice.

"Alright!" Firestar announced, obscenely perky. "Let's take that back down to the lake." He was still bouncing around like an excitable kit. Brackenfur hated him so.

The unfortunate warrior carried the squirrel by the very tip of its tail, as he'd been instructed. At the lake, Firestar and co. sat down primly for the grand finale. Never had Brackenfur wanted to kill another cat so much.

With his muscular neck he started to swing the squirrel around in loops, its tiny legs flopping pitifully.

"Alright," Firestar purred, "good, yes. Okay, one more big swing… RELEASE!"

Brackenfur released the squirrel, which arched through the air before crashing into the lake with a tiny splash. Beyond a doubt, nothing so strange had ever happened in this forest before.

Firestar and Graystripe hustled down to the edge of the water to see if the results of their experiment.

"Looks like it's… sort of floating just under the surface." Firestar appeared just a bit concerned by this development.

"It'll sink eventually," Graystripe assured him.

"Yes, but how fast? What if someone sees it? Brackenfur!" he snapped. "Fish the squirrel out and shove it full of rocks so it will sink. Then toss it back in. No one will ever know. Oh, and Brackenfur? You're probably going to the Kitty Bad Place for this."

"But you made me to it!" Brackenfur snarled in a strangled, tortured voice.

Firestar tipped his head to the side and smiled eerily at him. "Then I guess I'll see you there. Imagine all the fun we can have when we don't need to worry about our souls anymore."

Daisy had left as soon as the psychological torture had seemed to be over. As Firestar and Graystripe walked slowly back to camp, a thought began nagging at Firestar's polluted mind. He came to a dead hault.

"Graystripe?"

"Yes?"

"Am I a bad person?"

Graystripe gazed into his friend's luminous green eyes. The silence lasted a long time, enough to become awkward. Finally he said, "I love you anyways."

Firestar nodded, accepting his fate. "I'll see you back in camp."

Graystripe was emotionally wounded by this abandonment, but he walked away.

"Mousewhisker?" Firestar whispered. "Are you there?"

Mousewhisker fell with a clumsy thud from a nearby tree and groaned in pain.

"Well, I guess no one saw us at least," Firestar said, staring at the full moon.

Wait! The full moon!

"Oh my Cat God! I completely forgot tonight was the Gathering! Come on, Mousewhisker!"

Firestar and the only warrior he had set off, running as fast as they could towards the Gathering island.


	6. The Lightning-Struck Tower

Amazingly, the other Clans were still gathered on the island when the two ThunderClanners bumbled in like idiots.

"Hello, Firestar," Mistystar greeted him warily.

In fact… everyone was watching him like they were afraid. And then he realized: the island had a perfect view of ThunderClan's shore. He could see Brackenfur sinking the squirrel right now.

Oh, no. No no no.

The other Clans had seen _all._

"Firestar?" Russetstar asked. "What was that we saw you doing over there?"

No. They could know. No. NO.

"DIE!" Firestar seized Mousewhisker and began firing on the other warriors, yanking on Mousewhisker's tail to shoot lasers out of his mouth.

Cats scrambled over each other, yowling in terror, but Firestar and Mousewhisker were blocking the only exit. The other leaders kept coming back to life but Firestar shot them again and again until even Mistystar, who had the most lives to lose, moved no more. Nothing remained but a pile of dead cats. Half of all the other Clans had been wiped out, leaders and deputies included. Chaos would reign in the forest.

Firestar and Mousewhisker staggered from the island, wide-eyed and exhausted.

"I'm a monster," Mousewhisker wailed.

"My Cat God," Firestar murmured, ignoring him. "What have I become?"

"The thing you feared most of all." Mousewhisker said accusingly.

"I've become Smudge?!"

"Oh… maybe not that."

Firestar sighed deeply. "Look, Mousewhisker, I think I need to spend some time alone. You can find our own way home, right?"

Dazed and shell-shocked, Mousewhisker stared around. "Where are we?"

"Good boy."

Mousewhisker watched Firestar walk away into the night, wondering vaguely how to get home. He didn't really deserve to go home, though. He'd killed all those cats…

A bird of prey swooped over him. _"HAAAAAWK!"_ it screeched, seizing Mousewhisker triumphantly in it's talons.

"I deserve this!" Mousewhisker declared. "I deserve to be eaten by this falcon!"

 _"HAAAAAWK!"_

The two of them vanished into the night.

Below Mousewhisker and the night-hunting eagle, Brackenfur was still in the lake. He was chin-deep in water, and he had decided something.

He had shoved rocks into the squirrel. Enough to make it sink, just like Firestar wanted. And by the time it had all those rocks shoved down its throat, the squirrel's head was nearly flopping off. And it was too heavy to throw again, so Brackenfur has to drag it out into the deep water.

And now here he was. Chin-deep and not wanting to live anymore.

Brackenfur stumbled deeper and deeper, to where he could breathe or swim. There was no sunrise for him.

Firestar didn't recall falling asleep, but now here he was waking up. What had he even been sleeping on? There was nothing solid, just an empty void of painfully bright colors swirling around him in nonsense patterns.

"Where am I?" Firestar wondered out loud. His voice echoed back at him, making him flinch.

"Hello, Rusty," a sinister yet nasally voice purred.

"No! No! NO! Not Smudge, anything but Smudge!"

Smudge grinned wickedly. "Just think of all the fun we can have now that we don't need to worry about our souls."

end.


End file.
